


The Frankenteddy Paradox

by SpaceCadetDHD



Series: The Frankenteddy Chronicles [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Birthday Fluff, Birthday Presents, Fluff and Crack, M/M, Mutual Pining, Surprise Party, Team Bonding, via gift giving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28387155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceCadetDHD/pseuds/SpaceCadetDHD
Summary: Sheppard didn't quite realize what he was getting himself into when he suggested the team surprise McKay for his birthday.
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Series: The Frankenteddy Chronicles [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2100186
Comments: 19
Kudos: 75





	The Frankenteddy Paradox

**Author's Note:**

> This was sparked by my snooping on a conversation on one of the mcshep groups and just wouldn't leave me alone so I knocked it out in a day. Kudos to pebbles1971 for the beta-assist and saving the ending again. XD 
> 
> Also, I would like to shout from the rooftops that i actually accomplished a story that's complete in just barely over 5k. Like... you don't know how amazing that is. it gives me hope for my sanity.
> 
> * * *

Maybe it was cheating, but John had figured out Meredith Rodney McKay’s birthdate months ago. It had started out a mild curiosity because Rodney refused to tell people, claiming he didn’t want to be pranked. That was bothersome, because John had no intentions of pranking his friend, for once. There was pranking for fun, competitive jokes between friends, like the good, old-fashioned, harmless challenges back and forth that he and Rodney did all the time, and then there was the pranking that was more like hazing and bullying. It was endemic in the military, John had gotten used to it for the most part over his career, but it was also a problem among the nerds. 

John could put some of it down with a glare, maybe a few well-placed words to guilt the geeks into being nice to each other, and a few times he had gotten Elizabeth involved because Zelenka and McKay neither one of them were fully capable of handling the problem. It wasn’t their skill set. Office politics carried over into other galaxies, and it was a pain in the ass when it made one of their chief science brains afraid to share something so simple as their birthday with their team. Even Ronon said that was a problem, that Rodney didn’t trust the rest of AR-1 with that little piece of information, just because other people were jerks.

So John cheated. He checked the personnel files, got the sought-after date, and tried to keep his eyes off everything else he didn’t need to know. He gave Teyla and Ronon the heads-up and let the team figure out what they wanted to do about it. That left John trying to figure out what _he_ wanted to do about it. 

Birthdays usually meant gift-giving and cake. The cake thing was a problem because he couldn’t ask for one of those without the bakers getting wise and he wasn’t going to mess with that; Rodney didn’t want it getting out, so it wouldn’t get out. He ran into the same problem trying to ask for anything to be brought back from Earth on the Daedalus. AR-1 was being tested and god-help any of them if it blew up in their faces. Teyla and Ronon seemed to get that, so John wasn’t going to be the one to mess it up. 

So he sat in his room on his off-time, staring at every scrap of paper and glass bauble and lamp and candle and blanket, and tried to figure out what would work as a birthday gift for Rodney McKay. The guy didn’t like much that didn't come from his own brain, somehow. He wasn’t exactly a collector, and he usually complained about being too hot rather than too cold, so John couldn’t exactly trade for a blanket or something from the Athosians. 

One day in the fall John’s attention landed on the basket of ruined clothes and jackets he kept for replacement scraps for his uniform. He had patched together his jacket a couple of times, and ever since then had just saved the things that got ripped and torn to shreds, so he could maybe go through a little less. It wasn’t like they could just walk to the PX and replace things off the rack; everything had to be requested from Earth and sent along on the Daedalus, and that took ages. John hadn’t exactly gotten _great_ at patching his stuff back together, but he wasn’t terrible at it. 

And that’s when it hit him: he could _sew_ something. He had months to do it in because Rodney’s birthday wasn’t until the spring. 

So for the next few weeks, during his off-time, when things weren’t blowing up and aliens weren’t breathing down their necks, John stitched together material and formed it into funny shapes and individual pieces of black and blue and gray cloth and braided straps of canvas and leather. He failed entirely a few times and had to start over, had to trade for the odd scraps when he ran out. 

Colonel Sheppard had to outright buy a few bags of rice and dried beans from the mess supplies. He skipped out on eating rice for a month just so he didn’t take anybody else’s rations after that. He snuck a bunch of herbs from botany into the mix without any of the same guilt though; they could just grow more of that under the lights. The crew was still working with the folks on New Athos to try to figure out how to get rice growing out on the mainland. It was stupid sometimes how much that stuff bugged his brain when he had to factor in the Daedalus’ travel time into it now after all those months of signing off on requisitions requests.

In the end, John ended up with a patched-together teddy bear-like thing with a bean-and-rice-bag body and a couple of tumbled-stone-button eyes and a shiny-leather nose. It was hours of work and not the greatest, but it sat upright and could mind itself on the corner of a desk without any trouble. It even smelled like food, thanks to the dried herbs. One leg was longer than the other, so the thing would never walk, but the arms were mostly uniform. Kinda. The ears definitely matched, as he had cut those from the same scraps and made sure they started out the same size, damn it.

Sheppard tucked the very weird handmade bear in a basket and took it to Teyla. It was a stupid bear, and probably a poor excuse for a birthday present; what the hell was Rodney going to do with a bean-bag bear as tall as his keyboard? He needed new ideas and he was out of time to come up with a replacement, but he wanted to prove that he had tried first, because the whole birthday-conspiracy had been his idea in the first place.

"You don't need to do something else," Teyla told him, holding the bear out in front of her like a baby up for playtime. She was smiling at it, all happy, just looking at it. "This is very clever, John."

"I mean, not really. Teddy bears have been around forever back on Earth," he pointed out. "I just faked my own pattern."

"Colonel. This is hours of work. Hard work," Teyla pointed out. She pulled the patchwork bear in close and held up one of the uneven legs. "This is tight stitching, and very secure. It's clear you are not necessarily familiar with handcrafts like this, perhaps, but that's only obvious to me because I grew up doing these things. I have generations of experience behind what I see when I look at this."

John scrunched his nose up at her. "Look, it's not great-"

"It _is_. If you do not agree to give this to him as you intended, I will figure out how to get it there," said Teyla, offering a simple shrug. She was still smiling, quite pleased with him apparently, but John knew a threat when he heard one.

"Okay, fine," he said.

"Good. Thank you. I think he'll see it for what it is and enjoy it, too," she said. She put the bear back in the basket and fit the lid back down on it snug. "You made something out of love for your friend and your friendship and it would not be right to deny that effort now."

John seemed to get stuck as she passed the basket to him. "Wait. What? Try that again?"

"I found him a collection of jars for his experiments with soaps and creams. Ronon bought a leather apron for his work projects that might be perhaps less flammable than his jacket. Functional things. Simple gifts, easily acquired," said Teyla. "We think no less of him than you do, but we didn't invest the time into the gifts' construction and planning as you did. That is as much a proof of your friendship as anything else."

"Yeah, but that's not what you actually _said_ ," John pointed out.

Teyla sighed and put her hands on his shoulders while his were otherwise occupied with the bear basket. It kept his attention on her for the moment because he was stuck.

"John. You are allowed to love your friends. You are even allowed to love your teammates," she said.

"Maybe _some_ people are-"

" _John_. What did I say? I do not believe I hesitated or was at all unclear," Teyla said, very firm about it.

“Just- trust me when I say we can’t use that word about Rodney. I can’t. It’s a military thing. It’s important. That’s all I’m saying,” John replied. He didn’t want to get into it. It was too much weird Earth-human history and American bigotry to ever expect Teyla to process and be okay with. John wasn’t okay with it. But he rather liked his job and the part of it that got him an entire galaxy away from the military-things that didn’t exactly fit with John Sheppard’s life. “So if a teddy bear is an _I love you_ thing, we’ll... trade. You give him the bear, I’ll give him jars for stuff.” 

Teyla squinted at him, peering at him and entirely unrelenting about reading him, as was that thing she was good at. It occurred to John suddenly that the woman had enough telepathy to figure out Wraith, so maybe, just maybe, she really could reach in there and poke around in his head, too. John squinted back at her and tried to think about a brick wall. Then Teyla smiled at him again and patted his shoulder.

“No,” she said. “You sewed each of those patches for your friend. However you conceive him to be. And that makes it yours and his.”

John accepted that and tried not to bury himself any further than he already had, just nodded. He escaped the scrutiny and crept toward the door to run away before the subject dropped back down into things he hadn’t wanted to dive into. Teyla still caught him on the way out with her words; “You should still tell him what you feel it means.”

“Nope, I”m good,” John replied quickly. The doors _swished_ closed behind him and he scooted back to his apartment before he could get himself into any more trouble. The bear and his basket were sat on the desk for the next few weeks until the day of Rodney’s birthday celebration. John had a good handle on his definitions of things with Rodney and he was just fine keeping them to himself, where they needed to be. The patchwork frankenbear was going to McKay though, even if John had to sneak it in his room somehow and leave it without a note. Atlantis would let him in a locked door, if he asked nicely.

The compromise that John settled on, the day of their surprise party, was to put all three gifts in one basket. It made it all sneakier, more low-key, and there would be fewer raised eyebrows than if the three of them walked into the meeting carrying things that were piled on Rodney when he left. Ronon was given delivery duty and he waited until Rodney sat down at the conference table so he could put the basket in front of him, right at his eyeline. Teyla followed up with a cup of blue jello from the mess hall, slid up next to the basket.

“What’s this?” he asked, looking to Elizabeth. The Director raised an eyebrow and shook her head.

“I certainly don’t know,” she said.

“It’s a birthday present,” said John. “From your team. So _there_.”

Rodney looked over at him, jaw slack. He checked his watch then to check the date. “Oh.”

Elizabeth sat forward, surprised and amused to have been brought into the unexpected party. “I didn’t know it was your birthday, Rodney.”

“That was by design,” said Rodney, grumpy on principle. “I don’t want it getting around.”

“Secret’s safe with me,” replied Elizabeth. She glanced around at the rest of the team. “And apparently them. So since it’s here... are you going to open it?” 

And so he did, standing up to dig into the woven basket and multitask by scooping a spoon into the jello as he looked down at the offerings. The apron came out first because it was on top, and he recognized instantly what it was and what it was for, with the heavy leather construction and the assortment of pockets. 

The jars took a little more puzzling out and Teyla happily told him why she had chosen them, which left Rodney rambling out how surprised he was by it and that it was kind of genius and he probably should have had that idea months ago instead of doing the juggling between old plastic water bottles that weren’t made for what he used them for. 

He was surprised enough as the gifts went on that he sounded flustered, and the look on his face when he pulled the bear out of the box was pure confusion. There was no function for a teddy bear for him to have to figure out but he stared at it for a minute like he tried to. Then he looked to John automatically.

“You made me a bear?” he asked.

“I didn’t put my name on nuthin,” John replied lamely.

“Yeah, but those two don’t wear these colors,” Rodney pointed out, poking at the patches that were clearly uniform pieces. Oh. Right. Genius. _Well, shit._

John nodded. “Yeah. I figured out how to... sew a bear... thing.”

“The legs don’t match,” Rodney pointed out as he held the thing up above the table.

“But it does _have_ legs,” John replied, because it was important that they were recognizable and therefore served their intended function as teddy-bear-legs. 

“The right eye is lower than the other,” Rodney added. John rolled his eyes and sat forward from his slouch in the chair. He was pretty sure he was blushing and he gave a wave toward the bear to distract from it.

“Teyla said it’s the thought that counts,” he pointed out. “And that thing _obviously_ thinks it’s a teddy bear, right?”

“As much as a stuffed bear can _think_ ,” Rodney replied with a nod as he weighed the doll in his hands. “So thank you for the... birthday bear.”

“Frankenteddy,” John said, automatically offering up the name he had dubbed it months ago when he was piecing it together. He realized he had said it out loud when Elizabeth let out a quiet “ _Aww_ ,” and then a polite laugh. John shrugged. “Better than _birthday bear_.”

“Certainly more fun,” Elizabeth agreed happily. She looked around to be sure there were no more surprises and then smiled over at Rodney. “Happy birthday, Dr. McKay.” 

“Thank you,” said Rodney, surprisingly quiet. He was back to his usual boisterous and annoyed self a few minutes later once Elizabeth got him started on the latest technological challenges faced by the kids on the not-only-kids-anymore planet that both he and Zelenka had sworn off ever returning to. They kept having to go back to the place because, well, kids and technology, and apparently the Ancients hadn’t accounted for _childhood_. Now Rodney refused to, out of sheer spite for the Lanteans' lack of planning. Elizabeth was a little bit _not on the same page_ with that plan and a long, drawn out discussion happened about the inevitable process of aging and the suggestion that the children be allowed to do it as well. On balance, maybe John should have warned Elizabeth that it was Rodney’s birthday so she could have planned on being nice to him just for the day.

The basket went on the floor, but John noticed that Frankenteddy sat on the table, just like he was supposed to.

For one reason or another, John considered the birthday mission a success. No one outside of the team pranked Rodney about his birthday and he seemed happy enough with their surprise. And Frankenteddy had been carried out of the room tucked in Rodney’s jacket, never to be seen again, which presumably was a good thing. 

A week later, though, John stopped by to collect McKay for lunch and ended up just barely dodging a strangely familiar RC speeding toward him as the scientist’s apartment door opened. It stopped in the hallway behind him and John turned to see the familiar blue and gray-black bear sitting on the floor. Where there had been legs, however, there were now wheels. The legs had been reattached to the front of the body instead and were bolted down with little metal boot-shaped welds to connect to the front axle. He still sat up but that was mostly thanks to a metal frame that went to what was either supposed to be a small DHD or a steering wheel, John couldn’t exactly tell, but the arms had been attached to it. 

“Ah, good. Colonel! Look! I made him a car. His own car,” said Rodney. He sounded quite proud of himself. John blinked at the bear that could no longer sit by itself on the desk edge.

“I’m not sure he’s old enough for a drivers’ license, McKay,” John replied. “He nearly took out my ankles.”

“Ha. He’s exempt,” replied Rodney. He stepped out to pick the modified RC car up and showed John what he meant. Frankenteddy and the RC car were now one and the same thing, no extra licensing required to drive when it was obviously the bear’s only means of getting around. Well, that was one way of figuring out what to _do_ with a teddy bear on a busy science station. Frankenteddy had a job now.

“Okay... But that’s gonna screw with your torque and the aerodynamics and I am totally kicking your ass every time,” said John. “Just because I made the bear-part doesn’t mean I’ll go easy on the racing-part.”

Rodney shook his head and set the car down to send it back into his apartment. “Oh, no, I'm not racing this one. I just salvaged pieces. This was the leftovers.”

“What- but what about your car then?” The notion that they wouldn’t get their RC races anymore was actually a little painful. John wasn’t sure what to do with the possibility yet, other than argue against it. Rodney shrugged.

“I have a theory. I figured I’d take yours. It needs some work anyway,” he replied. John frowned at him for his vague _theory_.

“Right,” he said slowly, dragging it out to be sure the man knew John thought he had lost his mind. “And then what do you figure _I’m_ racing? Steal a wheelie-shoe from Chuck?”

“Oh...right. One second.” Waving John inside, Rodney went back to his desk and dug into a basket under the back corner. He came back with the entire basket, to hand to John. 

“What’s-?”

Rodney motioned toward the thing he had just given over. “Yours.”

“It’s not my birthday,” John said. Rodney nodded and shrugged at him for it.

“It’s not mine anymore, either. Your point?”

John suspiciously peeked into the basket and pulled out a very retrofitted RC car, with traction wheels and a converted body shell, with a customized battery and drive casing. The damn thing looked more like a Wraith Dart with wheels than an RC. It was a metal-welded body instead of the plastic shells, but it was lightweight. Putting the basket down on the chair, John tried to make sense of the motor panel underside but the thing was screwed shut. 

Rodney took the car from him and put it on the floor, traded for the remote. That was at least normal, nothing weird about it, and John had the car zipping toward the door in a second. The door let it out into the hallway with a thought. Rodney spluttered as John started out to go race. 

“Mine isn’t ready,” he said, annoyed. “It’s not even in my room.”

“You’re _assuming_ I'm giving mine up,” John pointed out, following the new toy out into the hall. Rodney followed after him.

“Well, yeah. What are you going to do, race yourself?” he replied.

John shrugged at him as they walked quickly after the RC car. “You’ve got Frankenteddy.”

“That’s not fair,” Rodney replied. “He’s not capable of even _keeping up_ with that one-”

“It’s okay, Elizabeth doesn’t want us gambling anyway. Sets a bad example for the crew.”

“That’s not my-”

“Relax, Rodney. Look where we are,” John replied, grinning smugly at him. Rodney looked up and found they were already at John’s apartment, the little RC car bonking its nose on the door, forward and back, testing the frame against an AI-equipped door John wasn’t helpfully willing-open this time. Rodney waved at the crystals and let himself in to fetch the RC, with the new Baby Dart zipping ahead of him with a tiny little squeal.

Then they headed out on the race track, those lower level corners of the North Pier that had the long halls with doors even John hadn't figured out how to get open. Granted, they hadn't put a lot of time into it; there were too many hallways like that, and none of them had ever shown anything they needed to worry about in the scans. Opening doors just meant losing more power, so until they knew how to handle the doors they had already opened, the policy was to stay out. The last thing they wanted to do was unleash a plague or something.

John kept his attention off the doors other than to keep from running the Baby Dart RC into them. Rodney hefted the basket along, backseat driving instead of steering his own RC along the halls.

"I think I know how to drive, McKay," John pointed out.

"It's faster though," Rodney replied. "And it handles differently."

"Yeah, what'd you do, anyway?" John had noticed that the controls were somehow on a hair trigger, almost ridiculously responsive. 

"It's a hybrid. I built a tiny motherboard and ran it off a crystal interface," Rodney replied. John stopped, the RC whirring down to a crawl on its own, as he stared over at Rodney.

"You _what_?"

"What?"

"You've been trying to get our tech integrated with the Lantean tech for two years," John said. He waved at the car. "And _that's_ what you used it for?"

"No, that's the prototype," Rodney replied. "It's gotta start somewhere. RC's are basic, low power, but great capacity for improvement. So I started making parts and switching them out until it ended up this... Frankencar."

"Why'd you give me a prototype? I'm gonna wreck it," said John, still feeling like he had been gifted a nuke in disguise. Something with the capacity to change the technological course of human history and he was just _crashing it into walls_.

"Because? We're gonna wreck it. That's how you field test things, so we can have fun as we do it," replied Rodney. He shrugged. "It's just some crystals. I did it before, so when it breaks, if you make sure that it breaks, I can make one that won't break."

"But that's hours, _weeks_ of work-"

"Yes, it is. I don't think Frankenteddy was put together overnight, either," Rodney said. They had apparently gone as far back in the track as they would be, because Rodney put the basket down and started unloading it. First Frankenteddy, then John’s now hand-me-down RC, and he arranged the two controllers very carefully in his empty holster on his leg. John watched him see to the fussy details, amazed by the fact that he had them all so routinely practiced and automatic when John found them so distracting.

Maybe Teyla was right. 

The thought was a little bit big and John decided he needed to have a seat. Maybe he should have gone to lunch before going racing after all.

“John?” Rodney stopped fussing at the race prep and watched him, openly confused. “What-”

Sheppard tapped the floor next to him. If he was settled on anything at all just then, it was that he wasn’t going anywhere for a few minutes. The stuff in his head wasn’t the stuff that got a split second before making a call, nobody was shooting at him yet. He could take a minute, since he had intentionally not taken one for the past few _weeks_ since Teyla corrupted his coding with the malicious malware suggestion that had just shorted _everything_ out.

Rodney, thankfully, took the hint and very gingerly climbed down the wall to sit next to him, careful of the remotes. He had to move one of them and started playing with it, sending Frankenteddy into the toe of John’s boot and bumping awkwardly over it because it hadn’t had the momentum built up yet. The bear stopped when it beached itself between the two shoes. John stared at it. The bear stared back at him, between his knees, calling him a coward with it’s little button eyes.

“Hey, Rodney?”

“I’m still _right_ here,” the man confirmed helpfully, still confused. He could get in line.

“Did you just give that car to me because I gave you the bear?” John asked.

“No, you were supposed to have it a few weeks ago, but things got busy,” Rodney replied, shrugging. 

“Yeah, a little,” said John. He hesitated. “So... we both spent the last few months building each other... stuff.”

There was an almost guilty quiet. 

"Not that that's bad or something…" John carried on, floundering as he worked his way toward making a call. "I'm just… _clarifying_. We put this thing together for the other guy and we spent our free time on it and did all the work in all the little details… I mean, that's all time we could have spent down here, or anything else… and we put it in on these things and we just gave them to each other."

"Well, if time is money, they're valuable. I mean, obviously, bridging the gap between Earth technology and Lantean is more so, but, sewing isn't easy, either," Rodney allowed, ever so gracious, as usual. "And as a private contractor, I _do_ make more than you, so-"

"I was thinking more along the lines of the hours cancel each other out and it's kinda like time we spent on each other anyway, but thanks for _that_ reminder, _Rodney_ ," John cut in, glaring at his friend.

"Right, that too," McKay agreed. 

"But since you brought it up," John said, leaning his arms on his knees to sit up a little taller and look back at Rodney. "Why'd you waste all that expensive time on something you were just going to give to me, anyway?"

If John was stuck trying to figure out how to say it out loud, he could get the genius to cough up the answer first. Maybe cheat and steal his notes if they were on the same page. Damn Teyla for making him wonder if they were, anyway.

"Because I knew you'd like it. This… this is our thing. And this one goes faster, and you like things that go fast," Rodney replied. 

_Well, shit_. John couldn't copy that answer.

"Why'd you make me a bear, then?" Rodney asked. Without any intelligent, meaningful answers to offer that matched the thought put into the new RC car, John shrugged.

"Because it was for your birthday and we couldn't tell anyone, so I figured I could get it done on my own. I hoped you'd like it, but it was just a… stupid bear."

"He's not stupid," Rodney argued. The car backed up off the edge of John's shoes and wheeled back a few feet. "He can drive."

"Weight distribution needs work," John pointed out. The car rammed his shoes again, under the helpful guidance of McKay.

"Don't call him _fat_ , either. He's sensitive about his weight," said Rodney, the laughter held very carefully in check. John looked away from the beady-button glare and back over at Rodney.

"Fine," he said. "His only intended function was to be a bear, that sat on the desk, and said happy birthday, because you at some point had to have hatched from somewhere, and I wanted to make sure you knew I was glad that happened."

Rodney went a little wide-eyed at him for it. "Really?"

"Yes, really. I didn't spend a month on a bear because I was _bored_ ," John said. "Duh."

"You could have just said that to start with," Rodney pointed out. John rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, and _Frankenteddy's_ the one sensitive about his weight distribution," he replied. Rodney backhanded his shoulder for that, which only proved John's point for him, he figured. 

"So what if he is," Rodney challenged, defensive and harmless, and John sat back against the wall to be harder to glare at.

"So what if he likes your genius face as it is and wouldn't have gone to all that work for anybody else," he said, very careful to stare at the Frankenteddy in question who was helpfully taking on some heavy lifting for a little patched-together bear. "Maybe that's not stuff you just say to start with, ya think?"

Rodney stared at him, perhaps the most unintelligent look on his face that John had ever seen, and any other day, Sheppard might have laughed at him for it.

"Wait. You're serious?" Rodney finally managed. John shrugged at him without looking over at him.

"I thought we were talking about Frankenteddy?"

Rodney caught his jacket sleeve and tugged in a bid to make him stop playing.

"No, FrankenSheppard, maybe," replied Rodney, insistent. " _Your_ uniform, either way."

Rather than let the traitorous Frankenteddy continue to call him a coward, John finally looked up at Rodney. "Fine. What?"

"Did you mean all that?"

"Did I say it?"

Rodney nodded. "Indirectly, yes. Through a bear."

That seemed damning enough for one day's gambling quota. "Okay then. There's your answer."

That was not apparently a sufficient answer because Rodney got a little huffy at him for it. "Honestly, would a straight answer kill you right now?"

"The definition of an ironic paradox," John said, genuinely amused, both at Rodney's question and at the man's agitation. He hadn't meant to rile him for once and he thought he had answered honestly enough. Anything more than he had already said out loud would get him fired. Sheppard would risk a lot for Rodney, but…

He wasn't actually expecting it when Rodney caught his jacket collar and slid him along the wall until they bumped shoulders. John was suddenly nose to nose with the man, and not at any apparent risk of being punched. There were instead bright blue eyes staring right at him, completely unavoidable, and very determined. 

"You have five seconds to say this was a very weird prank," Rodney said, a clear warning, though what he was warning for exactly John didn't know, and was getting admittedly curious about.

"I made the bear... _How_ is that a prank?" he asked.

Rodney eased up on the fist in his jacket, but he didn't let go. "Okay then."

"Okay…"

A heartbeat later, they were kissing, and John was only eighty percent certain Rodney started it. It was the science-geek's fault, and when the Air Force codes for officers' conduct reared up to bite him in the ass, Lt. Colonel John Sheppard would definitely point that out. But that was still a long way off. 

And the only other soul around to witness when John tugged Rodney against him and further into the kiss was a little blue and gray Frankenteddy, and nobody at Command would listen to him anyway.

~*the end*~


End file.
